Here you can, first-hand,
learn of all secret ingredients for
such a game! :-)

The Creators

Daniel
Schwinn
"Düsi"

Programing and concept

Tobias
Schwinn
"Tobi"

Creation of graphics

The Planning

Even for this kind of computer game
there has to be a concept first. This consists of
a main concept, in which there are things like,
e.g., that the screen arrangement will always be
the same and what the measurements of the single
sections will be, decided. Additionally to this,
there is a kind of script in which every screen
in the game is decided upon. Here it is also
determined what must be visible on an image and
which objects the player can take with him/her.

There's also a program flow plan
which defines how the single scenes are connected to
each other. For "Der Schatz im
Schloss" this program flow plan is six
pages long. Every page features the concept of a
strand which is bound to the particular content of
the inventory. In the plan the single screens are
colored according to function. For example, those
screens in which the game ends are red. The yellow
screens contain a crossing to the other strands and
therefore build the connections to the other five plans.

The complete program flow plans
in full resolution can be viewed or downloaded as
pdf files (right mouse click and "save target as" to download):Please note that these original plans are in German language.Plan page 0 | 1
| 2 | 3
| 4 | 5

The Graphic Art

Even the simple graphics for this game contain
much work already. To guarantee fast loading even for dial up access with 9600
baud all unnecessary
details were left out in the images.

At first the
images are drawn on paper with Indian ink. These are now
scanned in and further processed on the computer. In a
first step there are hand corrections made of the details
in the image. This is followed by the coloration of the images.

As a draft for the images
the designer has the appropriate description
of the image and the notes in the script. It
also has to be taken into concern that the
images fit together among each other.
Everything else is left to fantasy.

The Programing

For the creation of the program a special
technique has been used: With a program generator
that was written in Borland Delphi the HTML files are generated for the
game. There's a lot of work saved
during the creation of the program files through this.

Here you can see an outtake of the Delphi program
with which the files for the first image have
been created:

SetText(['You are standing in the Courtyard of the Castle. Straight ahead ',
'is the door to the Grand Entrance Hall. ',
'To the right side is another door which you think leads to the ',
'Servants Quarters.']);
SetLink(['Go to the Grand Entrance Hall',
'Go Through the Door on the Right']);
SetTit('Schlosshof');
AdvPage('H1002','A002',['H1003','H1004'],[1,2],'I000');
AdvPage('H2002','A002',['H2003','H2004'],[1,2],'I001');
AdvPage('H3002','A002',['H3003','H3004'],[1,2],'I002');
AdvPage('H4002','A002',['H4003','H4004'],[1,2],'I003');

This screen is used in four strands.
By calling the subroutine AdvPage
four times all four pages are created.

With the previously decided specifications
(text, name of the links and the titles)
this subroutine AdvPage creates the whole
HTML page with the use of the specified
parameters (file name, image name,
target addresses of the links, image name
for the inventory).

For this, more subroutines are then called,
like, e.g., the subroutine to output a title line.

Here is one of the files
that is generated by the
program outtake above:

<!-- Created by duesi computer software 1995, All rights reserved -->
<html>
<head><title>Schlosshof</title></head>
<body>
<center><img src="A002.GIF" height=200 width=300></center>
<p>You are standing in the Courtyard of the Castle. Straight ahead is
the door to the Grand Entrance Hall.
To the right side is another door which you think leads to
the Servants Quarters.</p>
<UL>
<LI><a href="H1003.HTM">Go to the Grand Entrance Hall</a>
<LI><a href="H1004.HTM">Go Through the Door on the Right</a>
</UL>
<center><img src="I000.GIF" height=142 width=300></center>
</body>
</html>

The whole game flow is created by the hyperlinks
among the single pages to each other. All in all
"Der Schatz im Schloss"
contains 83 of these HTML documents and
several hundred links between the files.
There are also 39 graphic files in gif
format. The whole game needs about 300 KB disc space on the web server.